Bam,

I know you’ve been buried up to your eyeballs in WIP, school and such. I’ve decided to lend a helping hand and review a few things ’cause I’ve got so much time on my hands. NOT! However, I try to read a bit every day and have finished the odd book now and again. The reviews might not be the most timely things, but at least I’m reading and reviewing. Right?

First up is Bonnie Dee’s The Countess Takes a Lover, a tried and true formula of the experienced, jaded lord tutoring the the novice (and awkward) into a sexual and social awakening, with a twist: worldly female decides to tutor bookish man on sensual and not-so-sensual arts. While I loved the idea of TCTaL, some of the pacing dragged a bit…but I want to give you the who/what/where before I get into that:

The Plot: Countess Meredith du Chevalier is a widow with a rep. Yep, you know the kind: she likes sexin’, likes gambling and likes drinking. She’s also been known to take a young lover (I’m thinking Samantha and Smith… probably because my friend is going to one of the Sex and the City premiers, but Meredith seems younger than Samantha). Meredith especially loves her freedom that being widowed has afforded her. The asshole Count du Chevalier abused and ignored Meredith, and luckily died leaving Meredith a free woman with a lot of dough. Chris Whitby is a botanist and the equivalent of a total nerd. His dad thinks he hasn’t popped his cherry (he hasn’t, and no, that’s not a spoiler) and can’t manage to make a conversation with a woman. Meredith makes a deal with Chris’ father, Lord Richard Whitby, agreeing to tutor his son in the sexual and social arts, and Whitby will support a bill in Parliament for her.

With the help of Richard, Meredith engineers a meeting with Chris and manages to immediately have him… er… panting after her. Since Chris is in the role traditionally reserved for romance heroines, it’s amusing to see all the new “feelings” he has in his first few encounters with Meredith. In one of them I’m sure I heard his balls drop. Their liaison moves to the country under the guise of creating a new greenhouse for Meredith’s country home. Chris has his sexual awakening and believes he is falling in love with his tutor. Meredith, of course, denies all of the feelings and equates them to sexual satisfaction since she doesn’t believe in love or marriage. Will Meredith admit to love? Will Chris get to travel the world in search of the perfect flower? Or has he already found it? Well, I’ll leave that to you to discover.

Shuzluva Says: As noted above, I loved the role-reversal idea. Unfortunately, the beginning of the book was slow - not ‘watching paint dry’ slow. Maybe more like ‘herd of wild turtles’ slow. I don’t think I was as drawn into Meredith and Chris’ relationship as I normally am when I read the typical Worldly Lord/Bookish Bluestocking. Not that I am always drawn into that relationship…but when the sexin’ ensued TM, PLS for Meredith and Chris, I wasn’t initially with them. I think there might have been a lack of build up for me. I knew the horizontal mambo was coming (hey, don’t we always know?), but I wasn’t exactly excited about it.

However, Ms. Dee makes up for it big time when Meredith and Chris return to London. In a typical male move, Meredith decides that Chris has gotten too close for comfort. Their interactions and mental gymnastics are spot-on for each of their personalities and perfect in the role reversal, and I could feel the tension, angst and pain of both characters as they tried to grapple with their feelings. Meredith’s comment when she sees Chris at a ball neatly sums up her feelings and I think it’s very visceral:

“He’s no one, just a lad I… tutored for a while, a short-lived liaison. I had to end it when his affection grew too deep.” It was an effort to keep her tone light. She felt abruptly exhausted and more ready than ever to retreat from the playing field of the ballroom and curl up in the sanctuary of her bed. But she knew that even there she couldn’t escape Chris. Memories of what they’d done in bed together would continue to haunt her.

Of course, Meredith carries on like a typical hero in this role and tries to salvage the night, going about it in the completely wrong way. As painful as that was to read, I loved it! So, first part of the book wasn’t so hot for me and I had to work to get through it. But the second part? Loved it! Overall, this one gets a B- for me.

This ebook is available at Samhain Publishing.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Historical, Shuzluva's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.